During the early part of the week I was still fighting with Huasheng to pay me the housing allowance that they'd missed for July and owe me for my Sept. 15 pay for August. Overall I was owed 5000 RMB. Huasheng had paid me 2000 for July and they wanted to pay me 2000 for August. I brought up the housing allowance that I was supposed to have been paid EVERY month of my contract and had never been paid. I didn't ask for every month, just the months when I wasn't working. At the "Ow My Ass" meeting they promised to look into it. Three days after payday I was contacted via WeChat by the new HR girl. I dunno why I type "new," EVERYone is new at Huasheng. She says there is some misunderstanding. I was on my way to the right classroom for a class I had been sent to the WRONG classroom to teach so I didn't have time to get into any lengthy discussion. I said they owe me 5000 this month; 1500 housing allowance still owing from July and 3500 downtime pay and housing allowance for August. Nothing to discuss. She texts back to me, "No, they don't. They owe you only 2000 plus 1500 housing allowance for August. Pay when you're not working is special." I text back, "That is exactly what I just told you." She says, "Oh, I understand. I will make a report and give it to my boss." Which is who I had told at the meeting about this. So this was all just a ploy to waste time and surely enough, Sept. 20, five days late, I received 2000.
I relayed the story to the girl who alerted me to this housing allowance and assured me that it was the same in English and Chinese and they definitely DO owe me this, and she said, "Well at least you got your full downtime pay."
Then I was chatting on facebook about how I have an offer that is about a gozillion times better than the one I have here. I have two friends who have worked at this university and liked it. I think they've both worked there for over 3 years. The pay is 4500 a WEEK. The uni I teach at here is 7000 a MONTH. No kids, better hours, lots of really good bonuses, no 3-hour drives to and from classes, probably a kitchen sink in my apartment, and many other huge advantages over my current situation. But because of the insane rule recently instituted in China, (a country where business owners treat employees no better than the crud they scrape off the soles of their 500-dollar loafers), in order to transfer my work visa, I have to get a letter of recommendation from the people who are trying to force me to stay here so they can rip me off some more. Look, the girls who work with me as facilitators and translators all quit. We're on #8 now and I haven't been here a year. Why? Huasheng doesn't pay them! They keep them working for as long as it takes them to realize they're not going to be paid. Same with the drivers. I've known 4 of them. That might be hyperbole. They may receive a little, but, like me, it's not what they've earned. I'm worried they're not going to pay me everything I earn in September if ANY of it. So I looked at an offer from Victoria University in Shenyang. A colder, probably more fun place than Taiyuan. Everything is better about the offer and Donna, who is in charge of hiring, said with my education and experience, I am a good candidate. But she needed assurance that I can get three things, a copy of my degree stamped by a notary, (have one), a criminal record check, (I can get one in two weeks), and a letter of recommendation from my current employer.
Well I had to explain that my current employer broke the contract, tricked me into signing a full time contract with a secondary employer by promising many things that two weeks later they took away. So they offered me a contract nothing like the agreement they had promised. I refused it and quit. They threatened to revoke my work visa so fast I wouldn't be able to sleep in my own bed that very night. They also said they'd have me black listed. So I said to Donna that it would be a challenge to get a letter of recommendation from them but I could get one from the university I'm now working for. Would that be enough?
Probably because she thinks there will be difficulties in transferring the work visa, I have not heard back from Donna in three days. So in effect, Huasheng is not just withholding pay, they are keeping me from getting the best job I can get and in effect stealing my happiness and job satisfaction from me.
So I talk to long-time employee at this university and all around sensible person, Margie, and she says that at least if everything falls through with Huasheng I still have TUST. (Taiyuan University of Science and Tech). Yeah, instead of 18000 a month I have 7000 and whatever else Huasheng feels they want to chip in. I have instability, psychotic bosses, kids classes three hours away, all agita all the time. But yeah, great, at least I got that going for me...
Then yesterday I was chatting with a long-time friend and former colleague named Jessica, who still lives in Korea. She was saying she thought about China but she can't handle the air. Even her pets can't handle it. I'm like that too. Between the stress of Huasheng, (which I have no doubt affects my health), my cold, and this air, I've woken up two nights in a row now and coughed until I puked. So I'm telling Jessica about that and about being trapped here with a perfect job just waiting for me but I won't get it because of the cards all being in the hands of the employers of China and she says, "Well at least you're not working in a factory."
Now, I don't want to seem ungrateful, and please don't get me wrong, I appreciate all three of these gals and their attempts at encouragement, but at least I'm not having my liver pecked out all day every day by a crow but can't do anything about it because I'm tied to a rock and getting sunburned and eaten alive by mosquitoes and listening to K-pop music the whole time but I'm immortal so I re-live the same excruciation every day. So, you know, THAT'S a positive too.
This is another example of what I'm constantly bellyaching about. People think THAT stuff is positive and my bellyaching is negative. The "Wellatleast" thinkers believe they're being positive, but I'm sorry, I'd rather be a "Wellatmost" type thinker. For example, well at most I'd be able to apply for that job at Victoria University in Shenyang and if I get it, go and teach there because nobody should be able to trap me in a job through lies and deceit. Or is that negative thinking?
Well at most I think even though I'm in China, the laws of this country should not be so favourable to the employers and nobody should be able to have ANYBODY working for them without pay. Or is that negative thinking?
Well at most I believe people in jail for victimless crimes like marijuana and tax evasion should be immediately released and REAL criminals like the sociopaths in business, banking and politics who think nothing of cheating others, making people work for free, even killing people, should take their places. Sorry to think all negatively like that.
Well at most I KNOW there is more than enough of EVERYTHING on this planet so we could all not only have what we need, but, (within reason), just about everything we want as well, if we only taxed the rich the way we tax the middle class. Working our asses off for survival is slavery. But then I'm harshing your mellow and you need to remove negativity like that from your lives, don't you?
I'm NOT a negative thinker, I just don't believe I should settle for a shit life that I don't deserve. I'm honest, smart and a hard worker. Always have been. I could have GONE to the hockey game in Beijing tomorrow afternoon. But because I have four new classes and little to no guidance in any of them, I have to pull some curricula outta my ESL Pandora's orifice that will keep the students, bosses AND mothers happy. Plus I have a brutal cold, AND tickets are impossible to get.
Twice the schedulers changed the room for my new classes without telling me so I had to solve THOSE problems. Me. A guy who is new here, doesn't know the college yet AND speaks no Chinese. I don't think my one Chinese phrase, "I am a Canadian person." would have helped to find my classrooms. One of those classes I asked for any advice I could get and said, "English level, number of students, textbook, any guidance at all," while asking. I was told I'd get some but never did. I got to the class and they had a textbook. So when I confronted the person who had promised to give me help in that class, he apologized and said he had told the students to tell me about the book.
Well at most I wish my coworkers would do their jobs and when they don't do them the LEAST they should be able to do is not tell me OBVIOUS lies to cover their asses.
I was texted by another co-worker during a class. Actually she called and I refused her call. One, I was teaching, and two, her name didn't come up on the screen, just the number so I didn't know it was her. Then she texted. The day before she had texted me, "When you get spare time I need you to come to my office and sign for your September pay." I was walking from my wrong classroom to my correct classroom when I got the text so I just put, "My pleasure." as a reply. I had no time that day because, remember, Huasheng has more than doubled my work/driving time since they shattered my contract illegally. So on THIS day she texted how she had waited all day for me the day before. Like I'd stood her up for the prom or something. And she said I needed to come to her office and sign. I said that I'd be free after the class I was teaching. She really SHOULD know I was teaching at that time. She has my schedule. I said I finished at 12. She said I needed to go to her office between 9 and 12 or 3 and 5. I told her I couldn't that day because I had to teach. Her response was, "So?" Then next text, "Every day?" And then, "Well we won't be able to pay you then."
I said, "Take it easy, I'm sure we can find a simpler solution to this problem than not paying me." And now IN MY CLASS I am texting like a Banshee, something I forbid my students to do. I say, "I am free tomorrow afternoon and all day Friday. Or you could slip the paper under my door right now." Her office is 2 floors from my apartment in the same building.
Later that day I found out that this same sack-o-hammers is the mystery person who told Huasheng that classes at this school are 45 minutes long. She's worked here for plenty long enough to know better than that.
Well at most I'd LOVE to work with people who are of at least average intelligence and who, at the very very least don't cost me money. But, talking with another person about this incident I got, "Well, it was probably a communication problem. She probably didn't mean to be rude. There must have been some misunderstanding. I'm sure YOU'RE BEING TOO NEGATIVE ABOUT THIS.
Folks, I don't think I am. I think a helluva lot of people around this world are conditioned into being far too quasi-positive. They're not being positive, they just think they are. And because they think they're so positive, they think it behoves them to spread the positivity to the masses. Like a virus. I sometimes feel like when I'm telling the actual truth, one of these poso-bots hears me, makes a big O with his, (or most often her), mouth and screeches like a body snatcher, "OOOOOhhh, negativity! Negativity!"
But, I dunno. Maybe it's just me.
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